Professor Robyn Norton is the Founding Director of The George Institute for Global Health, a not-for-profit, medical research organisation established in Sydney, Australia in 1999 and now also with offices in China, India, and the UK. Robyn is Professor of Public Health at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney and Emeritus Professor of Global Health at Imperial College London.
Robyn has had a longstanding commitment to improving the health of women and girls and co-established The George Institute’s Global Women’s Health Program in 2018 and more recently the Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine, a partnership with the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW and Deakin University, Melbourne. Robyn leads the Centre’s Working Group aimed at engaging with the business sector to ensure that research findings are translated into new and better commercial innovations in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. She is also co-principal investigator on the MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project which aims to create policies ensuring biomedical, health and care researchers in the UK consider both sex and gender in their work.
Robyn was appointed a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2016 and was made an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2017. In 2023, she was appointed to the Australian Women’s Health Advisory Council. She currently chairs the Advisory Board of Franklin Women (Australia) and the Advisory Board of the Network of Excellence in Women’s Health at Imperial College London. In 2024, she was appointed as a non-executive Director on the Board of the Black Dog Institute, UNSW and in 2025 joined the Medical Technology Association of Australia’s Women in MedTech Committee.
Associate Professor Maté Biro received his PhD summa cum laude at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany in 2011. His doctoral work focused on the biophysics of cellular actin cortex assembly. He previously studied Physics (BSc) and then Bioinformatics and Theoretical Systems Biology (MSc) at the Imperial College in London, UK, and did his Masters research at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA. He has worked at a particle accelerator in Tsukuba, Japan and as a Research Associate for A*STAR in Singapore. In 2012, he moved to the Centenary Institute, working on T cell migration and antitumour functions. A/Prof Biro worked as EMBL Australia group leader at the Single Molecule Science node at the University of New South Wales, Sydney from 2016 to 2024, before joining the Garvan Institute of Medical Research as Laboratory Head and Faculty in 2025. A/Prof Biro is a founder and the current president of the Australian Society for Mechanobiology. His research, highly multidisciplinary in nature, focuses on the migration of cytotoxic lymphocytes and tumour cells, and the signalling and mechanical interactions between them.
Associate Professor Eleni Giannoulatou leads the Computational Genomics Group at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. Her research focuses on identifying the underlying genetic determinants and causes of cardiovascular disease. Eleni received her Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics from the University of Oxford, UK in 2011. She undertook postdoctoral work at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford and the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford. Eleni holds an NHMRC Investigator Grant and is an Honorary Heart Foundation Future Leader fellow.
Professor Irina Voineagu is a molecular geneticist with a research focus on neurogenetics and genomics. Her research has made significant contributions to the genetics of neurodevelopmental disorders, including work on molecular mechanisms of DNA instability, autism genomics and transcriptomics. Prof. Voineagu’s current research investigates how gene expression regulation is controlled by non-coding regulatory elements and non-coding RNAs. Her work utilises CRISPR screening and in-vitro modelling of brain development to uncover the role of gene expression regulation in normal brain function and disease.
Professor Gemma Figtree AM is an interventional cardiologist, internationally recognised leader in cardiovascular research, and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney. A Rhodes Scholar with a DPhil from Oxford, she leads major national and global initiatives targeting early detection and prevention of coronary artery disease (CAD). She is Chief Scientific Officer of the not-for-profit CAD Frontiers, and is immediate past president of the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance, and prior Chair of the MRFF Mission for Cardiovascular Disease. She has attracted over $42M in competitive funding and led a new international field of work addressing unmet needs for patients with “SMuRFless” coronary artery disease. Her work has driven new clinical pathways, diagnostics, and industry partnerships. She holds multiple patents and serves on leading editorial boards, earning numerous national awards and fellowships.
Associate Professor Alisa Kane is an immunologist and Head of Department, HIV and Immunology at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, and leads the Translational Immunology Laboratory at St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research. A/Prof. Kane’s clinical, laboratory and research interests are in the diagnosis and management of inborn errors of immunity. She has established an adult immunodeficiency bone marrow transplantation service at St Vincent’s Hospital and is actively involved in translational research investigating mechanisms of disease and clinical outcomes in adults with primary immunodeficiency. Her research also focuses on identifying and developing clinically significant laboratory assays for the diagnosis and management of immune disorders.
A/Prof. Kane serves on the National Blood Authority’s Immunology Specialist Working Group for Immunoglobulin Governance, and on the Board of the Immunodeficiency Foundation of Australia. A/Prof. Kane is a conjoint Associate Professor with the School of Clinical Medicine UNSW, and completed her PhD thesis on cellular mechanisms underlying primary immunodeficiencies at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in 2019.
Inaugural St Vincent’s Precinct Collaboration Prize Winner. The Precinct Collaboration Prize is a new addition to St Vincent’s Sydney Health Innovation Precinct (SVSHIP) Research Week. This prize celebrates the incredible impact of collaboration. At SVSHIP we believe the biggest breakthroughs happen when diverse minds, disciplines, and institutions work together. This prize recognises outstanding collaborative research projects that spark innovation, overcome boundaries, and accelerate the translation of discoveries into real-world benefits for patients and healthcare, within and beyond our Precinct. It’s about what we achieve when we combine our distinct capabilities: Power through Partnership.
Dr Ashraf Zaman is a brain-cancer researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in the Translational Genomics Program led by Professor Joseph Powell, and a Conjoint Lecturer in Medicine at UNSW Sydney. Within the Garvan–St Vincent’s Brain Cancer Research Initiative, he leads efforts in brain-tumour banking and large-scale multi-omics studies, developing one of the world’s most comprehensive single-cell and spatial transcriptomic resources for brain cancer. Dr Zaman’s research focuses on adult-type diffuse gliomas, including glioblastoma, astrocytoma, and oligodendroglioma. His work dissects the cellular and spatial complexity of these tumors, defining distinct malignant cell states and identifying a rare “parental glioma” population that drives therapy resistance, recurrence, and immune evasion. Building on these insights, his team is developing patient-derived glioma stem-cell lines, 3D-bioprinted organoids, and high-throughput drug-screening models to functionally test and therapeutically target these root tumour-initiating cells. He plays a central role in multidisciplinary collaborations across neurosurgery, oncology, pathology, and computational biology, ensuring discoveries move seamlessly from the operating theatre to the laboratory and back to the clinic. His translational work includes a preclinical study that led to the repurposing of an asthma drug, which is now being tested in a clinical trial at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for patients with both newly diagnosed and recurrent glioblastoma. Beyond his research, Dr Zaman is deeply committed to mentoring emerging researchers and medical students, and actively engages in tumour banking, fundraising, public awareness, and community outreach to advance the broader mission of improving outcomes for brain-cancer patients.
Our Precinct is on the ancestral land of the Gadigal and Bidjigal Peoples of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge the many different traditional countries and language groups of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Peoples that work and visit us here. We also acknowledge that our partnerships and engagements happen across many different lands.
